Chapter 4 of 12
Why your score drops
Stages, checks, thresholds and what “not applicable” means
A score is arithmetic over a checklist, not a judge's verdict. Here is the whole checklist: what is checked, at which moment, and against which threshold. If a flight scored lower than you expected, the answer is on this page.
How the score adds up
Every check carries a weight. Passed checks award their weight, failed ones award nothing, and checks that are not applicable drop out of the sum entirely. The total is normalised to a 0–100 scale, and the grade follows from it.
Flight stages
The tracker works out the stage from telemetry and applies only that stage's checks. The figures on the right are the stage's total weight: the larger it is, the more that stage moves your result.
Every check and its threshold
State checks (lights, configuration) only count against you when the mismatch is sustained — five seconds in a row, not a single frame. Limit checks (pitch, bank, G-load, speed) trigger the moment the limit is exceeded.
On the ground: taxi and takeoff
In the air: climb and cruise
Approach
Taxi in
Landing
The landing is the one thing graded on a sliding scale rather than pass or fail — and the most expensive one at that: 26 of the 105 weights. If there were several touchdowns, the hardest one counts.
Touchdown G-load is scored separately: up to 1.3G earns full marks, up to 1.5G earns 85%, up to 2.0G half, up to 2.5G a fifth, and anything above that nothing. A landing that is gentle on vertical speed but abrupt on G-load loses its points right here.
When a check is not applicable
A check that is not applicable neither penalises nor rewards — it simply drops out of the sum, and the remaining weights are normalised again. That happens in three cases.
- The aircraft does not have what is being checked — spoilers on light aircraft, for instance.
- The tracker could not measure the value. On study-level add-ons the simulator's standard variables are often dead, and a variable that stayed silent all flight means “not measured”, not “violated”.
- The stage never happened. Take off straight from the runway without taxiing and the taxi checks are not applicable; go from final straight to rollout and the approach checks are not applicable.
Frequently asked
I set flaps while taxiing, not before. Why did that used to count as a violation?
It was a tracker bug, fixed in version 1.9.0. Flaps used to be checked on every frame of the entire taxi, so any five seconds with flaps up went into your violations permanently — setting them at the holding point could not undo it. Now there is a single check in a single place: flaps must be set by the start of the takeoff roll. When exactly you set them is your business.
I switch the taxi light off at the holding point so I don't dazzle anyone. Is that a penalty?
No. Only nav lights and the beacon are required continuously. The taxi light just has to come on at least once during the taxi — switching it off as the situation demands is entirely up to you.
I turn the landing lights on during the roll, around 80 kt. Does that count?
Yes. The check looks at the moment of liftoff: if the lights are on by then, it passes.
I fly X-Plane. Is it true penalties came faster there than in MSFS?
Yes, and that is fixed in 1.9.0 too. Thresholds used to be counted in telemetry frames, and X-Plane sends them five times more often than MSFS — “five frames” meant five seconds in one simulator and one second in the other. All thresholds are now expressed in seconds, and both simulators behave identically.
I switched the landing lights off a few seconds after 10,000 ft. Did I lose the point?
No. You get 30 seconds of grace. The penalty only lands on lights left on for the whole climb.
I lower the gear at 2,000 ft, per SOP. Is that too late?
No. Configuration is checked below 1,000 ft AGL — the stabilised-approach gate — even though the approach stage starts at 3,000. Above 1,000 ft, gear up is not a violation: on a vectoring platform the aircraft is legitimately clean.
Why can't a manual report score above 70?
In a manual report the pilot types in the touchdown rate, and there is nothing else to verify. Without the cap, a form would be worth more points and XP than a flight honestly flown with the tracker. For the same reason a manual report only counts once the flight's estimated block time has passed since booking: filed sooner, the flight stays in your history but brings no money, no costs and no XP.
I still think a check fired unfairly. What now?
Post in Feedback with the flight number and what you see in the review. The review keeps the full track, so what actually happened at that moment can be checked against it.